The energy surged through Alex’s fingers and blasted forward. Alex watched as the glowing projectile fired off, almost as if it was in slow motion. He could see the minute branches of thermal energy that stretched out like solar flares. The shot streaked past no less than three Zotari missing by mere inches. The moment finally arrived and Alex saw the energy only nick the spinning bomb. It blasted into the wall behind and Alex looked on with horror.

I missed? I mean not really. I hit it, but I missed.

Just like that, the only distraction they had at their immediate disposal had been wasted. Alex was sure that they would likely all die now. If not all of them, most of them. It was all his fault.

A Zotari that had been close to the bomb had been looking at the ground where it had landed. It was now looking at Alex. Their eyes met and Alex could see the Zotari attempt to draw more attention to him. He was going to prepare a preemptive strike when suddenly, the Zotari was glowing. Not just that Zotari, but the entire cluster of them. An instant later, that entire section of hallway had been disintegrated.

Alex looked over to the two riflemen standing guard. They had abandoned their post to investigate the explosion. Alex gestured to the rest of his squad. If they were ever going to get a chance to escape, it was right then.

They waited a moment for the guards to pass. The second they had, they made a mad dash for the door. Everything else was silent to him. He wasn’t sure if it was because of what happened next or they were really distinct, but Alex could distinctly make out the clacking of their steps in the hospital lobby. Somehow, they seemed louder than the explosion had been moments before.

Alex was scared to sneak a look back almost as if it would make what he suspected a reality. His concern won out in the end. He looked back, just in time to see one of the riflemen fire.

Lightning almost identical to the war machines he had spent so long destroying arced in their direction. Before he could call out a warning, one of his companions dropped. Alex hadn’t felt particularly close to any of the other squad members, but a loss of any of them was devastating in its own way. He looked to the lifeless body of his companion. The contents of the box she had been carrying were now strewn all across the lobby floor.

The other rifleman was charging up a shot of his own now. It crackled through the air. Alex’s heart stopped. Before the bolt had even left the gun, Alex knew its target—Krizzik.

Alex charged forward screaming with determination. Krizzik had only just recovered from the loss of his friend and was turning back towards their attackers. Alex’s scream drew the attention of the Saxan. Krizzik looked him dead in the eyes with resignation. Alex could see the eyes of a man who had given it all for his people. Alex knew, Krizzik was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for this cause. Alex just wasn’t willing to allow him to do so.

Three more steps. Two. One. Then Alex was airborne. The lightning collided straight into Alex’s chest.

He rolled, chest smoking. All he could hear was Krizzik shouting before he started to lose consciousness. He felt a sudden sharp pain in his skull. It was as if every synapse in his brain fired at once. He could hear Nagaar’s voice in his mind, but couldn’t make out what he was saying. All he knew was that if he passed out now, he would likely never wake up again. He hated when the snake king took control of him even if it was small, but he decided he would forgive the king this time.

He shot to his feet, surprising Krizzik with his sudden motion. Krizzik wasn’t the only one surprised however. Alex had looked at his status to see how much damage he had taken. It had been a significant amount, but that wasn’t what had surprised him. He had a significant spike of energy added to his reserves.

Did I absorb the lightning energy? Alex thought, a large smile forming on his face.

He wanted to know what had changed, but he had no intention of figuring that out right now. He would need to focus on the fight at hand. They had already lost one of their small squad, another and they would be left extremely vulnerable.

Alex wasn’t too worried about that now however. He had significantly balanced the scales in their favor. He still didn’t want to take too many shots from their rifles as they were still extremely powerful, but at least he was able to do something with them.

He tried to channel the electric energy through his body into an attack. He could feel it surging through his veins. It wasn’t entirely clear to him how his body could differentiate the different types of energy. His energy reserves didn’t seem to have separate pools for each type of energy. Everything was just lumped together in the same space. He did see some expenditure when he was converting the energy, but it was almost intuitive. He could grab the energy he wanted and convert it to the type of energy he needed.

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This was not the case with the electric energy. He could feel its presence and he could differentiate it, but when he attempted to release it in its electric form, it just came out as thermal energy.

What the heck? I picked up kinetic energy easy. Thermal was a little bit harder, but I still got it. I’m pretty proficient at using it too.

Apparently, the electric energy was fairly similar to thermal energy. Similar enough that he couldn’t pinpoint the differences. The same differences that would allow him to actually use the energy. He tried a few different iterations, but nothing yielded the results he wanted. That wasn’t to say that he was completely useless.

Alex pelted the riflemen with thermal energy blasts. Some connected, but the soldiers were well trained. They sought cover and fired off shots from behind some rubble from the explosion. This greatly limited their visibility. Alex had been taking very few hits before, but now he didn’t take any.

He waited for a chance to make a move forward. The guns were powerful, but pretty slow on the reload. They had been alternating, but after a few minutes, they had inadvertently fired at the same time. It had been more difficult for Alex to avoid the projectiles, but he still managed. With both Zotari cowering behind cover, Alex could make his move.

He blasted forward, grabbing a rock the size of an engine block. He hoisted it above his head as he jumped over the small pile of debris the Zotari were hiding behind. With the force of a meteor, Alex slammed the boulder down on top of the Zotari he had judged to be a better shot. Before it could even react, it was a puddle underneath the rock. Blood splattered across the remaining Zotari’s face and eyes, virtually blinding it. Not wasting another moment, Alex fired off a quick death ray at the alien. A moment later, its headless corpse slumped to the ground.

He could hear screams from the other side of the wall of destruction he had made from the bomb. He ignored them as he collected the two rifles. He turned back to his squad and was instantly filled with equal parts rage and sadness.

They had lost two more squad members. When he looked at Krizzik, all he saw was defeat. Alex didn’t know how close the commander felt to each of these soldiers, but he did know that Krizzik likely felt solely responsible for their deaths. He understood the sentiment as he felt the same. What made Alex more sad the mental anguish he could see on Krizzik’s face, was the severed arm he saw twitching on the ground.

It was Krizzik’s arm.

Alex rushed the alien who was already beginning to fall over from the loss of blood.

“I got you. Don’t you worry. It’s going to be ok. We did it. We’re gonna get out of here,” Alex said while cauterizing the wound on Krizzik’s shoulder.

He screamed in agony. Alex hadn’t remembered hearing his friend screaming during the fight, but he would remember this scream.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” Alex repeated more for himself than for Krizzik.

He told the remaining members of the squad to retrieve the stolen research and supplies. Alex hoisted up Krizzik in a fireman’s carry.

The trek back to camp was much less eventful than their stint in the hospital. They didn’t see any patrols or groups of enemies. The only eventful thing was when they had finally set off the charges. He knew the subsequent explosion would be enormous just based on the sheer number of bombs they placed, but Alex was still surprised by the devastation it caused.

He felt the ground rumble for a few moments before he was able to see anything change. Large chunks of the hospital fell as the lower floors supporting them crumbled. A significant part of the hospital remained upright, but Alex had a hard time imagining the hospital ever returning to full functionality. More likely, the hospital would be fully demolished and replaced. Until then, it would only add to the apocalyptic feel the rest of the city exuded.

It was starting to feel like scorched earth tactics, except almost in reverse. The Saxans were willing to destroy anything if it meant getting their city back. Even if that meant there was barely any of their city remaining.

Alex had been pacing for hours by this point. He had given Krizzik to the healers and had been waiting to hear any kind of news. Krizzik had been passed out for the majority of the trip back, only awaking with the rumble from the explosives. The healers didn’t appear to have any hope of restoring his arm, but they assured Alex that Krizzik would be fine.

When he had asked the other Saxans in his squad, they had told Alex that they had prosthetics that would nearly be identical to the real thing.

At least that means that he will be able to do things at least sort of normally.

He wasn’t sure why he was freaking out so bad. He was closer to Krizzik than any one else on this entire planet, but he would be fine. He would be able to live his life. It wasn’t until a long introspection that Alex realized this felt all too similar to when he had become paralyzed. All of those emotions he thought he had worked through started to bubble up to the surface. The only difference now, was he was fully conscious now. Before, when it was his own tragedy, he had been in and out of consciousness for so long that he had gone numb by the time it finally sank in. Now, he was on the other side of it.

This must have been how Sarah and the girls felt.

He wished that they hadn’t had to go through that. It was torture, and he didn’t even get the full feeling of helplessness they had. He knew Krizzik would be fine. They hadn’t known he would be ok.

This feeling, while still depressing and heavy, was welcome. In a weird way, he felt closer to the girls than he had in a long time. His heart tightened.

He was so close.